SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1) (12 page)

“What have I done?” he cried out, tears streaming from his eyes. “I am sorry.”

Before his bullet-riddled body’s reflexes waned, he unbuckled his seat belt and accelerated the car. He grasped within his shirt the pendant of La Virgen de Guadalupe for past crimes forgiveness. Bullets still permeated the car door skin and glassless windows as he drove the vehicle into an old oak. His unsecured body met the windshield upon impact.

The Blazer pulled alongside and out hopped an operator. The SUV drove off as the operator sanitized the scene of the cleaner’s disguise pieces, moved the shotgun back to the front seat, ensured prints were on the grips, and looked for any other pieces of tell among the glass pieces, seats, and dash upholstery that would create questions at the scene.

The operator opened a wallet and saw the picture of the kids.

“Beautiful.”
Finish the story.

“We just tied you back to your wife’s nasty drug business you fucking traitor.”

The operator removed the cover-issued driver’s license, replaced it with an old true-name driver’s license, and inserted an Arizona taxi business card in the man’s wallet next to the picture.

Gunnery Sergeant Miguel Gonzalez was again in the same place as his family.

There were many more men who had and would share the same fate.

Chapter 14

H
avens disembarked the aircraft in Dubai with an offensive mental mode activated. He proactively scanned for any suspicious situations or behaviors in the terminal that indicated any deviation from normalcy. He looked for any overt or covert law enforcement and security personnel showing signs of apprehension or response to an incident. The area appeared clear any suspicious indicators or abnormal details that would trigger his internal warning mechanism.

Feeling comfortable with his surroundings, Havens switched off the enhanced sensory cybernetic organism mode of his mind and switched on the hurried business traveler manner. True to the character and his current pangs, he did what most typical people would do getting off the plane and dialed home.

Answer Christina, you should be using the phone located in the cupboard now. Pick up.

Havens dialed again to no avail. Although he assumed all was likely normal and Christina may be out and about, Havens broke security protocol and dialed her personal mobile phone. Again, no answer—only voicemail.

Well, as long as I am bending the rules, let’s just try Maggie.

Havens hands became a bit sweaty as the phone continued to ring. His teenage daughter would rarely, if ever, not answer a phone, including times while in the bathroom, shower, at dinner, and endless other occasions where Havens would either hear or see her pick up the phone with the sense of urgency that rivaled his own profession’s responsiveness to obligations.

OK, maybe a text. No, I don’t want her having communications with this number since I am not buying her throw away iPhones.

“Red,” Havens said to himself under his breath. Havens dialed a number that would relay to Red. Red would see the number and dial from another phone.

He and Red had experienced more than one encounter over the years when, in the moment, death looked eminent. They both had given one another that knowing look of being proud to have served with one another and to have each other’s back, but they also weren’t going to sit around waiting for fate to happen. Men of action defied fate to make a looming demise a time of valor and victory. Death to those who challenged their heart and will.

C’mon Red, hit me back.

Havens stared at his phone as if his intent gaze would cause the phone to ring faster, willing Red to pick up.

Shit, it is hot in this terminal.

He exhaled to center himself knowing the apprehension was triggering his physical sweat and emotional discomfort. He felt his bowels dropping with a wave of gastrointestinal cramping.

The phone rang.

“Domino’s Pizza. Will this be pickup or delivery?” Havens answered with a smile of relief at having received Red’s call before diarrhea further complicated his situation.

“Hey brother, where are you now?”

“Ah jeez. If you don’t mind, I’ll plead the fifth on that one. Suffice it to say I am still in the old world but heading westward as fast as I can. Had some odd hiccups that I hope are behind me now. I’ll feel better when I land in Frankfurt.”

“When will you get there?”

“About 8 hours if my plane is on time and I make it though security with no more problems.”

“OK, so you are in Dubai, right?”

“Dick.”

“Well you are the one sharing so much on the line, I’m just doing my job teaching you not to burn yourself by making dumb ass mistakes like that on the phone.”

“You are right, I am just a bit stressed on the home front. Were you ever able to find anything out? I tried reaching them but no one is picking up.” Havens was convincing himself that it was nothing unusual. Deep down he knew it was not normal. He was scared. His phone was hot. It was slippery from his hand’s sweat.

Red paused uncomfortably as he struggled to find words that would express the situation to his friend.

“And…?” Havens pushed.

“Sean, I got your message late. There has been an awful…I have awful news, Sean. I am sorry to have to tell you there was an accident. Well a break-in, and Sean, someone, um, Sean, your family is gone, buddy.”

Silence filled the lull.

“Sean, are you there? I am so sorry, bro. I did everything I could and well, they got the guys who did it. They killed ‘em. I mean the guys who did it are dead now. I chased one down and they got him and the other was killed and the guy I was chasing is dead too, and one guy that was also there that I didn’t see is also dead now in addition to the others. Shit brother, I am so sorry.”

Sean Havens absorbed the news. In the twisted fantasies he had had of what it would be like to ever receive news like this, he never imagined it this way.

He felt nothing. It was not even emptiness.

He had almost anticipated this news, but why he did not immediately know. He recalled that something subtle had been triggered when Red started talking. Ever since Havens and Red served together in a Tier One Special Mission Unit, Red always replied to Havens’ Domino’s Pizza intro with, “I picked up your wife and made a delivery to your mom.”

His head was floating. Suspended on its own. He was unaware of whether he was standing, walking, or holding a phone. The news was disassociated with his personal life. It was as if he had just heard of two deaths on the news. They were not his family. His family would not be gone.

Images of his daughter smiling at him sitting on the couch played before him. Family outings. His wife bringing food to the table like June Cleaver from
Leave It to Beaver.
Their trip to Costa Rica. No, his family was not gone. He could see them. They were here.

“Sean. Man, I am sorry, can you say something so I know you are still on the line?”

“Where are Christina and Maggie, Red.” Cain, where is your brother?

“Sean, what do you mean, like where are they now, like now?” Red didn’t know if Sean meant the morgue or hospital, or if he was even grasping it all.

“I meant what I said, Red. Where are they?”

“Sean, c’mon. They’re at a funeral home for now I suppose. Christina’s brother, Lars, has been helping out a bit. He’s gotten a lot of the initial arrangements made until you get back. I didn’t even know she had a brother before this. Certainly not a Chicago cop. I mean, detective.”

Images of family moments shifted in Havens’ mind to visualizations of them on stainless steel gurneys, pulled out of body storage refrigerators, and in glossy wood coffins with white decorative upholstery. He visualized a crime scene. Reality was hitting him.

“What happened to them, Red? Who did it? Was it that guy who raped Maggie?”

“There were a few gangbangers who were in the house. We don’t know why they were there. Nothing was missing. One was shot at the scene. But he was killed by his own guy. I don’t know why, maybe he was deviating from the plan or had second thoughts. He had been wounded upstairs.”

“Gang members? That doesn’t make sense. The girls were fighting back?”

“Well, it seems that the guy who was wounded upstairs had been shot by his own guy up there too. The girls were um…They were not touched, Sean. They died painlessly.”

“So they were put together and killed? Were they executed?”

Oh God, Sean, how could you have let this happen? You failed your primary mission to protect your own.

He envisioned his wife and only daughter kneeling on the ground, maybe reaching for one another’s hand in the last seconds. Looking at each other for hope and solace.

“No, it looks like Christina got to Maggie’s room and the killers kicked in the door. Sean, we can talk about this later? Man, I hate doing this on the phone like this.”

“What the fuck other choice do we have, Red? I am here, you are there. What the fuck can I even be doing here?”

For the first time in minutes, Havens realized he was standing in the middle of the walkway area in the terminal. Passersby glanced at him but he was completely oblivious to their need to move around him.

Havens walked over to a seating section at another gate and collapsed into a chair. He dropped a small bag that he had taken from the airplane and filled with some items to get him through a couple more days of travel. As he released his grip he felt the tightness of his clenched fist and a slight pain as he extended his fingers. Color began rushing into the whiteness that had taken over his digits.

“Sean, we figured you would be going through Germany, so your company will be flying you in their plane. I have the details. I am going to meet you in New York. The Gulfstream will get us closer to your home.”

“My company knows about this?”

“Yeah, the relay on the house alarm pinged security. They of course knew you were TDY and sent a CI guy over to the house.”

“Red, this isn’t a counterintelligence issue. It was a law enforcement issue. They were supposed to be watching them. Somebody is supposed to be watching them when I am away. Who the hell is looking out for our families when we are deployed? Someone didn’t do their fucking job and now my family is dead.”

He hung up the phone with such anger he half expected his thumb to go through the end call button and out the back of the phone. He could no longer control and process all of the emotions closing in on his sanity. Havens’ mind was unable to find a compartment to hide these feelings of such an unjust loss due to his perceived inaction. His head flopped back in the chair hitting the wall behind him. He needed Christina. Christina helped him through this. It was coming back. The stress. Christina was gone. More than a best friend and lover, his bedrock was gone.

“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes.

They were dead. And his baby, she was gone too. They would have been praying for his help that would never come. His daughter would be begging in her mind that her father would not let her down and save them before certain death. They would have been scared. They would have been terrified. They were alone.

Havens wept inaudibly to others, but in his mind he was wailing. His role of husband and father pushed his inner warrior to the corner where he would be called upon later. For now, the parent would mourn the family he had fought so hard not to lose in his years of special missions. Missions tasked to create outcomes of death that made other families cry. Not his.

He watched a family walk by dragging luggage and mini-roller backpacks. Overcome with the pain in his chest and head, he felt the need to attack someone. Repeatedly.

Chapter 15

T
he Crystal City, Virginia office building looked like every other structure on the block. Harrison Mann walked past the office complex’s lower level Italian restaurant, went to the elevator bank, and upon entry pushed the sixth floor button.

Exiting at the sixth floor, he showed a badge to the armed security guard, and crossed to another elevator bank where he pushed a button for the tenth floor. On the tenth floor, he walked fifteen feet to an open staircase and climbed ten steps without acknowledging the guards in tactical advantage posted at the top of the stairs. At the top of the stairs he locked his mobile phone in the small metal lockers resembling post office boxes. He pocketed the key.

“Good day, Mr. Mann,” said a guard with a KRISS Vector submachine gun strapped across his chest. The guard was much less comfortable giving a nod after a lifetime of requisite salutes to leadership. He bobbed his head acknowledging the Deputy Program Director of the supposed DoD Counter Terror Foreign Collection Task Force.

As far as the guards knew the high security requirements were due to the Task Force’s need to house and receive human intelligence reports from non-official cover military assets globally tasked with targeting foreign threats.

For the most part this was true, except for the fact that this particular shop was focused on
domestic
intelligence collection with a mandate not to share or deconflict with other agencies or law enforcement elements. Direct action follow on activities—a nice way to say violence—associated with the intel collections may be, as it was often described to insiders, “a bit outside the scope of DoD,” not to mention the restriction on military action on U.S. soil.

Mann simply gave each man a half nod acknowledgement of their presence and greeting.

He swiped the door pad with his badge and entered the office of the Domestic Support Activity, or DOSA as it was called by the select few bureaucrats and defense czars who even knew of its existence. DOSA was layered under a Pentagon basement program where Mann’s boss, Prescott Draeger, worked as Program Director to a number of interchangeable programs with ever-changing names. The czars thought they owned Draeger and assumed with all practical reason that he was one of their own. Like so many secreted programs, even the employees were often seconded to someone else.